If Republicans send a health care bill to President Obama’s desk that changes the Affordable Care Act’s definition of a full-time job from 30 hours per week to 40, the White House said on Wednesday that the president will veto the bill, the Associated Press reports.

Republicans argue that the current 30-hour requirement encourages companies to cut back their employees’ hours. The White House countered that there “is no evidence the law has caused a broad shift to part-time work,” AP explains.

The White House argued that the GOP’s changes would reduce the number of Americans who are eligible for employer-based health coverage and would “create incentives for employers to shift employees to part-time work,” AP says.

The bill is one of the first initiatives the House of Representatives plans to debate in the new Congress this week.

The Congressional Budget Office, a nonpartisan group, weighed in on the dispute and sided with the White House’s analysis and projections that defining a full-time job as 40 hours per week means “1 million fewer people receiving health coverage at work,” AP reports.

Advertisement

Plus, according to the CBO, making workers ineligible for employer-provided health insurance means that they’ll then have to turn to alternative options like Medicaid or “government-paid health coverage”—measures that would “boost federal deficits by $53.2 billion over the next 10 years,” AP writes.